2/6/2020

Introduction

  • I’m David Montgomery ’08
  • I work as a data journalist
  • I also host a history podcast, The Siècle, about 19th Century France

War, history & data

Today I’m going to combine those interests with one of yours: conflict and violence. My most recent episode took on a topic that remains the subject of fierce debate in the fields of conflict studies and international relations: the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15.

The key questions:

  • Did the Congress of Vienna reduce violence?
  • At what cost?

Ending a generation of war

The Congress of Vienna, and other diplomatic agreements signed around the same time that often get lumped together with it, came at the close of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars — a chain of interrelated conflicts that saw most of Europe at war almost continuously from 1792 to 1814, and then again briefly in 1815. Millions of soldiers and civilians died; economies were devastated, land ransacked and trade throttled; and, not least to the people who lived through it, ways of life were irrevocably overturned around the continent.

It was in this spirit that the great powers of Europe came together in Vienna — the same spirit that brought countries together in Westphalia two centuries earlier or Versailles a century later.

There were attempts to punish the losers and benefit the winners, of course. But the overarching goal was to find a way to prevent this from happening again.

The Vienna settlement

Containing France

  • Napoleon was exiled and replaced with France’s traditional kings from the House of Bourbon.
  • The Bourbons were obliged to accept a constitutional monarchy instead of the ancien régime
  • The map of Europe was redrawn to surround France with stronger neighbors
  • The other great powers of Europe signed an anti-French alliance

Preventing chaos

  • Europe’s great powers agreed to settle their differneces at periodic congresses
  • Borders were drawn with an eye to the balance of power
  • Most powers agreed to unite against future revolutions

Results

  • War actually did decline in Europe
  • Wars continued to happen
  • But a particular kind of war did stop happening: great power wars
  • From 1815 until the Vienna system collapsed in 1848, there were no wars pitting one of Europe’s great powers against each other, let alone one featuring three or more great powers at war

What didn’t happen

  • States didn’t stop using violence against their own citizens
    • Newspapers, universities & opposition politics were legally suppressed
    • Regime critics turned to violence in turn, through revolutions and coups
    • A revolution in Poland was bloodily suppressed
    • Ones in France & Greece succeeded through force of arms
    • Portugal devolved into six years of open civil war
  • Great powers invaded each other in the name of order
    • France invaded Spain to crush a revolution seeking a liberal constitution
    • Austria did the same in Piedmont and Naples
    • German states agreed to let each other invade each other to suppress disorder
  • Countries used violence to acquire & keep overseas colonies

Questions

  • Can the 1815-1848 reduction in violence be traced to the agreements at Vienna?
  • How did the following factors affect peace:
    • Great powers settling differences at congresses instead of the battlefield
    • Suppressing revolutionary ideologies & movements
    • A new map emphasizing balance of power
    • Commitment by leaders to avoid war
    • Demographic & economic exhaustion after Napoleonic Wars
  • If suppression preserves peace, is it worth it?
  • Did peace in Europe simply enable Europeans to export violence to other parts of the world?
  • Were wars prevented, or merely deferred?

Sources